Deep Cold and a Film Crew

Nights lengthen into silent moonlit worlds, between vivid days. Long shadows fall away from the sun which makes a low arc from south-east to south-west horizon and is gone leaving the cold to breathe through the crack at the door. The snow comes. Stoke the fire, begin winter’s work.

I just finished an intense weekend with the crew from Double A Productions in my forge. We filmed an episode of the upcoming series Arcade Arms in which various forge masters create real-world versions of weapons from popular video games. The series will be airing in March on the YouTube channel Geek and Sundry.

I created the Mace of Molag Bal — a weapon featured in the game Skyrim, part of the Elder Scrolls world of Nern. Along with the host Nika Harper we filmed the process of mace making, casting 100 lbs of bronze, carving models and calculating volumes. There was steam, molten metal, and ultimately a finished mace, all filmed in low winter sunlight. It was -22 degrees Celsius outside and we shot several elements in the woods or in unheated parts of the workshop. At one point I managed to freeze my bare hand to an iron crow-bar! It must have been a shock for the crew coming from Los Angeles into the crushing cold of Atlantic Canada. But we had hot soup and tea and the crew was ready for adventure. We spent about 13 hours filming in one day, and then they had to drive out in a major snowstorm.

I’m looking forward to seeing the show. I’ll post it here when it comes out.